This weekend was sunny and cold, perfect winter weather to go on a walk, get your thoughts cleared up and have a chat over coffee. And because I am adult enough (and my local park has a café that sells duck and swan food), I figured, why not feed the ducks. I know that they…

My birthday is coming up soon, and I was asked; what do you wish for your birthday? This is a hard question, because generally I don’t want many physical things in life. But after a lot of thinking, I realised that I recently have enjoyed reading a book before falling asleep. For some reason, I … Continue reading My wish list for 2018→

When I moved in my apartment in January, there was already a kitchen in it, what a luck! My landylady, when showing me the apartment, told me that the kitchen was 30 years old and that it had always been there and that it cost nothing, but also that she had nothing to do with the kitchen.

Fine, that would mean for me that I could do anything with it or just throw it out. Throwing out just wasn’t an option, that would have meant that I was supposed to buy a new one…

So I tested all the functions of the kitchen and everything worked ok, so I decided that I would leave it as it is and just try to work around it designwise.

The first step was, to paint the walls in a pretty dark, warm green. More like khaki, with brown undertones. My idea was to draw the attention to the walls and the strong color and away from the ugly beige brown kitchen doors.

So with a lot of help from two friends, we painted everything, except the wooden ceiling.

The next step was to clean the kitchen. A lot! When starting to clean it, I found a layer of old newspaper lying on top of the kitchen cabinets. Maybe to protect them from grease or dirt? I’m not sure. The interesting part was, that it was from 2009. And my guess is, that was the last time, someone took a closer look to this kitchen and cleaned it thoroughly. So my sister and I spent one day scrubbing every cabinet and corner of the kitchen, and in the end, it was still ugly, but ready to be used again!

After painting and cleaning, I could „move in“ eventually and fill the cabinets with dishes, glasses and so on. That was when I found out that there is not much space in this kitchen and there was no space left for food. So in the next weeks I will try to find some ways to optimize the space and find some storing solutions.

To make the kitchen a bit more cosy already, I created a little booze corner, got some plants and a picture on the wall. The whole idea for this room is decorating with even more plants, golden accessoires and some shelves on the wall.

If you are like me, then you are familiar with the modern ways of job searching. You have your CV in a microsoft word edited and then converted to PDF and you click attach, then send. Before you did all this you created a Linkedin page, and a Facebook page and you went to all job advertisement sites. You picked up a newspaper and went straight at the back….home of all the jobs. You called people, or people called you, you got a forward message on your whatsapp ….from your former college or I forgot, maybe you knew someone or you just bribed someone.

This has become very common among job seekers in Kenya. There is this funny phase “Job seeking is a job on its on” a very common saying especially among the young people looking for jobs. For most graduates and Kenyan elites, it has been a heavy cloud hovering around concerning jobs even as the current economic status seeks to choke the air out of them.

Most of these people have experienced nightmares as various big organizations cut on their operation costs to remain afloat. This move has led to many organization cutting down their workforce while others lose their jobs in mysterious circumstances. The graduates stories are horrifying, they narrate stories that have very little hope, having sent over 200 applications, through mail, hand delivered or post, one can manage only two responses which will be regrets.

Most of them can not afford to pay rent so they live with their relatives, some taking any available job. How would the same Government who paid for their fees through the Higher Education Loans Board turn around and deny them employment. The scenes of young people carrying placards on the streets seeking the attention of employers have become very common.

This way of job hunting brings new meaning to how desperate this young people want to get jobs, holding placards with their academic credentials in the streets. Several graduates have already landed interviews and jobs using this method. Though many sympathize, some think the young job seekers are taking it too far. But yet again, people are gifted with different courage, and its only yourself who knows your needs.

As much as there are very qualified young people out there, doing all they can to land a job, I must register my disappointment with the Kenyan companies (the employers). They act very hypocritical. They are very dishonest and I wonder what happened to corporate governance.

It’s definitely not easy for Kenyan employees but it’s even worse for the job seekers as their fate is unknown.